The Internet is an influential mechanism for disseminating information between a variety of individuals and organizations. With the proliferation of blogs, forums, and online social networking sites such as the Facebook service provided by Facebook, Inc. of Menlo Park, Calif. and the Twitter service provided by Twitter, Inc. of San Francisco, Calif., news and information is being created by both professional news outlets and from ordinary people. Many of these sites provide user profiles giving users the ability to create relationships with other users of a particular site. Once a relationship has been established, news and other communications can be shared from one user to some or all of the users having a relationship with the user.
Additionally, a variety of academic databases are available via the Internet. Many of these databases are targeted toward a specific academic area, such as the IEEE Xplore database service provided by the IEEE of New York, N.Y., while other databases encompass multiple disciplines, such as the Web of Science service provided by Thomson Reuters of New York, N.Y. These academic databases include a bibliographic listing of a variety of academic publications (e.g. research papers and other publications) related to a variety of topics. Many academic databases include digital copies of the academic publications and/or a reference to a library containing physical copies of the academic publications. Bibliographic information for an academic publication includes a listing of the authors of the academic publication. Many academic databases include a listing of academic publications referenced by a particular academic publication.
In computing, a graph is an abstract data structure including nodes and edges. A graph contains a set of nodes connected by one or more edges. Values can be associated with the nodes and/or the edges. A graph data structure is an implementation of the mathematical concept of a graph, which is a representation of a set of objects with some pairs of the objects connected by links. Graphs may be undirected, where an edge indicates a relationship between two nodes within the graph. Graphs can be directed, where an edge indicates a relationship between a first node and a second node within the graph, but not the corresponding relationship between the second node and the first node.